


the abyss also gazes into you

by amnixiel



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest Spoilers, Gen, Nohr | Conquest Route, Spoilers, Spoilers for Fire Emblem Awakening, Very mild body horror, spoilers for fire emblem fates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2018-09-27 07:22:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9982637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amnixiel/pseuds/amnixiel
Summary: Corrin's back from the dead and the Bottomless Canyon.And something's not right.





	1. can't carry it with you if you want to survive

**Author's Note:**

> “Once you lose someone it is never exactly the same person who comes back.”  
> ― Sharon Olds, Satan Says
> 
> From her siblings' perspective (Hoshidan and Nohrian alike), Corrin essentially returns from the dead after falling into the Bottomless Canyon. Everyone is thrilled to bits when she comes back, of course, and because we followed Corrin through the Bottomless Canyon, we as gamers know that the Corrin who returned is the same as the Corrin who departed.
> 
> Death, real or simulated, usually isn't that simple. This work explores what might have followed if, after the Bottomless Canyon incident, the Nohrian royal siblings had unknowingly welcomed back into the fold a Corrin who wasn't quite the same as the one who'd fallen in.

“Elise! Come back!”

Heavy wingbeats stirred Elise’s braids and sent dust devils pirouetting down the road.  Her pony Caville whinnied shrilly and galloped even faster from the Malig Knight steed bearing down from the air.

“Elise!” Camilla wailed from atop Marzia, heartbroken. “Elise, why won’t you look at me?”

Elise gripped her staff harder, stifling every instinct she had to turn and obey her older sister’s plaintive plea.

_It’s not Big Sister. It’s not her. Not really._ Elise repeated the mantra in her head to drown out the sound of Camilla’s crying as she urged Caville faster. More than happy to put distance between them and the clawed-and-fanged terror from above, Caville rocketed towards the watchtower in the distance.

Elise’s spirits lifted as she saw the enormous stone edifice that demarcated the Hoshido-Nohr borders rising up to meet their approach. She pressed one gloved hand to the heavy bag slung across her chest that bumped her in the ribs with every stride. “Almost there, Caville. We’re almost there.”

A shadow suddenly swept over Caville’s pale hide, and Elise had only an instant to tighten her grip on her bag and stave before an enormous pair of talons sideswiped her steed and sent her flying.

The world still spun around Elise as she staggered to her feet, reeling from the pain in her side from where she’d hit the ground and the terrified screams of _her_ Caville, her pony, Xander’s gift to her for her 15 th birthday—

_Enough._ Elise imagined the crisp, no-nonsense voice that Leo had always adopted when regaining control of troops on the verge of panic. _Keep moving forward, little sister. Don’t look back. There’s nothing for you there._

So Elise fixed her sights on border two hundred meters away, where alerted Hoshidan troops were marshaling their archers in response to Camilla’s noisy arrival. In all likelihood, they hadn’t even noticed her yet amidst all of Marzia’s clamor. Now they were on their guard, though, and Elise’s sinking heart knew that they would probably shoot her down before she could communicate her intentions.

Then she spotted in their ranks one archer with a long, silken ribbon of hair whose bowstring glowed with the blessing of the divine dragons—and her chances of survival improved.

Just as Marzia began shrieking her displeasure at discovering her quarry’s absence, Elise dashed for the Hoshidan front lines.

“Prince Takumi! It’s Elise! From Nohr!” she called desperately, drawing closer to the Hoshidan archers. True to her prediction, the archers redirected their attention to her as they took notice of her racing towards their perimeter. She was close enough now that she could see the resentment burning in the face of Hoshido’s second prince.

“Elise!” From behind and above, Camilla’s reproach, punctuated by Marzia’s screeching, drew all eyes back to her at once. “Elise, sweetling, come back to us!" 

One hundred meters. Elise continued her dead sprint, and she could see Takumi’s hateful scowl melt into confusion as his eyes darted between Elise and Camilla’s threat displays above. Perhaps detecting the desperation in Elise’s face, the prince half-raised a hand to belay the archers’ fire, his lips moving to form an order that she couldn’t hear through Marzia’s deafening roar.

“Prince Takumi of Hoshido,” Elise screamed as Marzia’s shadow bore down on her once more. “ _I surrender!_ ” 

She had just enough time to see Takumi’s eyes grow wide before something struck her hard in the back and darkness swallowed her whole.

* * *

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Hana tried to reassure Sakura for the umpteenth time as the youngest Hoshidan princess once again turned her anxious gaze to the sky. They both stood just beyond the torchlight of the healers’ tents, the camp buzzing around them as a fresh shift of sentinels relieved the night watch. Hana barely registered the changing of the guard as she watched the face of her liege and best friend contort with worry.

“B-but he’s late.” Sakura clutched her stave tighter to her chest and looked to Hana for consolation. “S-Subaki is never l-late.”

Hana clenched her teeth in unhappy silence because really, prim, perfect Subaki was _never_ late—especially not when returning from a standard night patrol. Hana might almost look forward to rubbing this unexpected tardiness in his smug, perfect face if it wasn’t worrying Sakura so much.

Sakura suddenly perked up, pointing towards something on the horizon. “Th-there!”

Squinting, Hana could just barely make out the familiar red tail of hair streaming from the back of an approaching pegasus. The relief that spread through her stomach was short-lived as she noticed the pegasus’s erratic, strained wingbeats.

Hana pulled aside a passing healer as Sakura rushed forward to meet Subaki. There were very few reasons a pegasus would behave so abnormally under Subaki’s skilled handling, and none of them good.

“Subaki!” Sakura cried in relief as the pegasus touched down. “Are you alright?”

Before Subaki could reply, Takumi slid off of the winged horse’s back and huddled urgently up to Sakura with a small yellow-and-black bundle in his arms. The pegasus chuffed softly as the extra weight left his back, and Hana’s concern receded somewhat. No wonder the poor thing had been struggling to fly: it had been carrying twice its expected load.

Now the pressing question was why Takumi had even been riding with Subaki in the first place.

Hana hurried to Sakura’s side as the princess lifted one hand delicately to cover a gasp. “What is it, Sakura, what’s wrong?”

The overwhelming smell of blood hit Hana as she reached Sakura, and immediately her eyes flickered appraisingly across Subaki. He looked a little less composed than usual—wide-eyed, breathing hard, a few stray hairs slipping out of his ponytail—but bore no injuries that would explain the heavy, coppery scent in the air.

Hana’s heart leapt to her throat as she then spotted the dark red splotch growing on Takumi’s tunic. Oh gods, had the _prince_ been injured during the night watch?

Before Hana could get a closer look, Sakura issued an order. “Hana, please go back to the healers’ tent and tell them to prepare for a patient in critical condition.” Her voice reflected the controlled serenity of a seasoned healer.

“Of course,” she replied, snapping to attention with an about-face. The little samurai walked briskly toward the nearest healers’ tent and burst through the entrance, quickly becoming the focus of the startled priestesses inside. “Prepare a surgery! Prince Takumi has been wounded in action.”

Despite the gravity of the circumstances, Hana could not help but swell with pride at how smoothly the healers galvanized. In under a minute the priestesses had fetched clean sheets, replenished salves, and readied their most potent healing spells. Sakura would be happy to see that her drills and simulations were paying off.

“Prince Takumi!” Hana turned as the head priestess met Takumi at the tent’s entrance. Sakura accompanied him but did not look up from her work, preoccupied with casting a healing spell over Takumi’s midsection. “Please, this way—how badly are you injured?”

“Not me,” Takumi grunted, extending forward whatever he was holding in his hands.

This time the head priestess made a little noise of surprise. Hana frowned and stepped closer, craning her neck to examine more closely what had rattled both Sakura and one of their most experienced healers.

Hana stared uncomprehendingly as Takumi laid down his burden and the healers politely shuffled her aside to begin their work. The sharp, angular cut of black-and-white fabric and the unfamiliar presence of satiny ribbons rather than cords confounded her at first, and she had to blink a few times to collate the glaringly unfamiliar components into the shape of a human form. Her eyes traveled up the body, seeking out its face—and then froze.

One pigtail had fallen loose from its bow, the long, wavy blonde locks glued to her jaw and cheek with sweat and blood. The entire right half of her torso was a red mess of shredded fabric and gaping wounds that Hana couldn’t begin to fathom into a recognizable human form. But Hana knew that if their pale, petite patient were to open her eyes, they would shine a deep, rich amethyst that hearkened back to the lineage of the Dusk Dragon.

“Princess Elise of _Nohr_?” Hana whispered to herself, aghast.

“She surrendered to me.” Takumi’s mouth was a tight line as he removed his gloves, by now thoroughly steeped in blood, and tucked them into his waistband.

Hana glanced over the injuries that had flayed open the girl’s side and could not imagine Fujin Yumi, Raijinto—or, indeed, _any_ Hoshidan weapon—leaving marks like _that_ on human flesh. Hoshidans believed that death should be merciful and clean, and their weapons were designed to this philosophy. “But then—who…?”

A telling beat of hesitation preceded Takumi’s answer. “…Princess Camilla. Of Nohr. I drove her off, but she only needed a second or two to do…this. I doubt we’ve seen the last of her.”

Hana rocked back on her heels in silent shock. Although the Nohrian army—their own Corrin now included among them—served a dishonorable king with an ignoble cause, most in the Hoshidan army acknowledged the unconditional love and devotion that bound Nohr’s royal siblings together. It was begrudgingly understood that Corrin had only been able to betray Hoshido _because_ she had been so blinded by that same unconditional love and devotion.

“This doesn’t make sense.” Hana’s knuckles grew white as she tightened her grasp on her katana. “This doesn’t make sense at all.”

“Uh. Lord Takumi?”

Hana and Takumi both looked to Subaki, whose eyes were round and huge as he offered an unfamiliar, bloodstained leather satchel to the prince. With bare hands Takumi reached into the bag and drew out its contents. 

Though none of them knew Nohrian well enough to read the elegant, scrolling gold text proclaiming the title on the tome’s cover, all of them recognized Brynhildr from the fateful day that Corrin had chosen to abandon her birthright.

Directing medical personnel like a maestro while weaving a complex healing spell, Sakura was the only point of movement in the tent as the three soldiers stared dumbly down at the book.

“We’re in the middle of a _war_ ,” Subaki murmured. “And she brings to us, her sworn enemy, her brother’s divine weapon?”

Takumi’s ponderous gaze moved to rest on the little princess, doll-like and deathly still under Sakura’s ministrations.

“Just what the hell is going on in Nohr?”


	2. when i'm falling i'm at peace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's only when I hit the ground  
> It causes all the grief

“Corrin!”

Soaked through and deafened though she was by the sheeting rain and peals of thunder lashing down on the Bottomless Canyon, Corrin couldn’t hide the grin that pinched at her cheeks when she turned at Xander’s call.

Not ten minutes ago, from the moment Hans had struck down an innocent Hoshidan swordsman, Corrin had been certain of her death. Even with Jakob and Gunter crowding in reassuringly at her flank and back, Corrin had found a strange, cold sort of solace in accepting that she would not make it through the Hoshidans’s superior numbers alive. At least she had made it out of the Northern Fortress—felt foreign earth under her toes, tasted the air of a faraway land. And dying in the service of Nohr was not so terrible a way to go.

But now, encircled protectively by her siblings, Corrin wondered at her own fatalism. Xander, Camilla, Leo, Elise—all of them had made the long journey to this far reach of Nohr just for her. For _her_. To them, she was something important and precious, something not to be left alone to die in a lonely canyon.

To see this proof of her significance warmed Corrin down to her mud-splattered toes.

“Corrin, you fall back first with Gunter and Jakob,” Xander ordered, his attention fixed on the one-eyed ninja who had appeared to reinforce the garrison Corrin had just conquered. “We’ll follow close behind.”

A tiny, selfish, warmongering sliver of her wanted to stay and fight. She yearned to prove her mettle before her beloved siblings. She longed to show Xander that his long lessons in swordplay and countless sparring sessions with her had produced a fine addition to Nohr’s royal family, indeed.

Instead Corrin lowered the Ganglari and smiled. “Will do. Thank you, Xander.”

Waving for Jakob and Gunter to form up behind her, Corrin turned her feet back towards Nohr’s heartland and began for the rickety bridges swaying like spider gossamer over the Bottomless Canyon.

Following Gunter’s horse over the slick, perilous terrain on foot provided enough challenge to fully occupy Corrin’s attention until they had nearly made it out of the canyon. Only once they were halfway over the final crossing over the Bottomless Canyon did Corrin miss the sound of Jakob’s armored boots thudding heavily into the wooden planks of the bridge behind her.

The princess slowed to a halt, peering around for her trusted servant. Almost instantly aware of her change in pace, Gunter reined in his destrier and shot her a questioning look.

“Gunter, have you seen Jakob?” Corrin yelled breathlessly over the storm, her hair whipping about her face in thick, wet ropes as she scanned the battleground. “He was here a second ago…”

“I’m sure he’s right behind us,” Gunter shouted back. Surprise and concern deepened the lines around the old knight’s mouth and eyes as his destrier whinnied and pranced nervously in place, protesting their hesitation atop the unsteady bridge. “Now hurry up. I can’t stand to be on this bridge a moment longer—”

“Don’t worry,” sneered a familiar voice. Corrin caught sight of Hans’s hulking, hunched figure lumbering towards them from the other end of the bridge. “You won’t have to stand there much longer.”

“Hans!” Corrin’s astonishment at seeing Hans alive after his failed skirmish with the Hoshidan archers dissipated with the mercenary’s top-speed approach. Something about the way that the mercenary was plowing towards them, gaining speed, set Corrin’s teeth on edge.

Similarly unsettled, Gunter drew his destrier back towards Corrin a few paces. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

Corrin could now make out the yellow nicotine stains in the mercenary’s crooked grotesque grimace of a smile and the heavy brass earrings that marked his previous career as a slaver. “Hans, what are you doing? Slow down! You’ll run right into us!”

“Less talk, more death!” From some hidden sling under his cloak the mercenary flung two hand axes at Gunter.

With a severe frown on his face, Gunter almost absentmindedly deflected the first with his shield and dodged the second. The old knight smoothly transitioned the defensive maneuver into a retaliatory formation, bringing his horse around to an advantageous angle and moving to draw his broadsword.

Despite witnessing Hans attempt to murder her oldest mentor in cold blood, Corrin relaxed. She’d seen this technique and received its smarting results during practice too many times to doubt Gunter’s skill or aim. Once Gunter had his strike lined up properly, Hans was as good as dead.

But.

An ill-timed clap of particularly loud thunder startled Gunter’s already spooked destrier, sending Gunter careening off balance. Forced to drop his broadsword, Gunter reached up to seize his terrified horse’s reins.

Before Corrin could help the old knight could reassume control of his horse’s frantic movements or dismount, Hans surged forward and swung a hatchet with all his might into the destrier’s side.

The Nohrian steel in the cavalry armor held true, and the hatchet’s sharp edge bounced harmlessly off of the animal’s side. The momentum of Hans’s blow, though, tipped over the horse, all of its heavy cavalry armor, and Gunter’s fully armored heft.

Corrin saw the fatal step, watched the destrier’s hoof reach for purchase on the bridge and find nothing but air.

And man and horse tumbled over into the yawning emptiness of the Bottomless Canyon.

Corrin loosed a high, wordless cry and leaned over the edge of the bridge, helpless to avert the demise of her oldest friend from the Northern Fortress.

 _He’s gone._ Corrin barely felt the tempest beating down on her back or the weight of the Ganglari in her hand. _Gunter’s gone._

“Did I knock your babysitter into a ditch?” Hans’s cruel, boisterous bellow of a laugh echoed oddly distant and distorted, as if Corrin was hearing him from underwater. “Here, let me help you join him!”

Sudden, enormous heat and pressure built in Corrin’s chest, spreading through her limbs and climbing up her neck into her cheeks—not the deep, stinging throb she felt after hours of fending off Siegfried, but a blazing, liquid fire that boiled for release. The surge of warmth left a buzz in her ears. The world looked sharper. She could count the raindrops as they pelted past her eyes.

Shaking a little to clear her head, Corrin raised the Ganglari in time to catch Hans’s hatchet on its downwards swing and directed the mercenary’s momentum towards the ground. Every instinct she had bayed for blood, but first—she had to know—

“I want answers, Hans!” Her tongue didn’t feel right as the words left her mouth. Why didn’t it feel right? “Why are you doing this? Why did you provoke the Hoshidans? And why— _why did you kill Gunter?_ ”

Corrin barely managed to spit the last few words. Her jaw felt numb. The world swam through a strange, shimmery blue sheen. The hair that fell over her temples tugged gently upward, and when her free hand moved up to investigate, she found the tresses draped over a pair of thin, bony branches.

“Wh—what are you?!”

Hans cowered before her, his face a rictus of genuine horror and fear. In the surface of his eyes Corrin saw reflected back at her a smooth, featureless sphere of iridescent blue crowned in a magnificent wreath of silver branches.

Not branches. _Antlers_.

“ _ANSWER ME_.” Corrin wasn’t even entirely sure how she was projecting the half-scream, half-roar that she barely recognized as her own voice.

Fear considerably loosened Hans’s tongue. “I was just—just following orders! King Garon’s orders!”

“ _WHAT_?” Corrin stalked forward with the Ganglari fisted tight in her right hand. “ _YOU LIE!_ ”

Hans bolted.

“ _COME BACK HERE!_ ” Corrin howled in that mangled, ululating tone. She swung the Ganglari around to toss into Hans’s worthless, fleeing spine—

—and barely had time to realize that her weapon had anchored itself tightly around her wrist before King Garon’s— _Father’s_ —parting gift jerked her headfirst into the vast void of the Bottomless Canyon.

Falling didn’t feel as much like flying as Corrin had imagined. The light filtering down from the surface level of the canyon dissipated in a few blinks of the eye. The inexplicable heat that had fueled her rage tapered off as she fell—was _pulled_ by the Ganglari—through deeper and deeper darkness.

Hysterical laughter bubbled up from her chest. In the end, even Xander, riding in like a proper knight in shining armor, could not rescue her from her end. _I am about to die_.

But the cool, blank acceptance of mortality she’d felt in the battle with the Hoshidans eluded her. Her family had come for her. She couldn’t leave them behind now.

Air rushed past her face, stinging her cheeks and chilling her nose. Corrin closed her eyes and pored over the faces she knew and loved most.

Gunter. Jakob. Felicia. Flora. Lilith.

Xander. Camilla. Leo. Elise.

And she prayed for a miracle.

* * *

In another life, a little dragon named Lilith bravely plunged into the darkness of the Bottomless Canyon and called upon Moro to save the shared second princess of Nohr, Hoshido, and Valla and first Divine Dragon child in generations anointed with the full blessings of her draconic birthright. In that other life, Lilith spirited Corrin away to the Astral Plane, which eventually became sanctuary and home to the many who were swayed by her endless kindness, patience, and hope to join her cause.

In this life, something else took notice of the prayers of a princess falling in a void between worlds. Something else raised her from the depths of the Bottomless Canyon and deposited her—sleeping, Ganglari tucked under her arm like a child’s velveteen rabbit—on the back doorstep of Rinkah of the Fire Tribe.

And fates diverged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that this update is short, but this segment felt so complete and standalone that I thought it warranted its own chapter. (Not to mention that it also does some setup for the future chapters to come.)
> 
> My sincere apologies for the brevity! I hope you'll continue to bear with me while I sort out the mess of the next chapter.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything creative in a Very Long Time, and I'm well aware that composition skill, much like any other aptitude, fades with time and disuse. I happily welcome feedback. :)


End file.
